So they should just pass a law making it so that every month the citizenship must fill out forms and let the government know what they're doing, saying, and to who, plus a $10 filing fee. They can get it all done for a profit. Typical government bureaucratic waste.

This is not new. Telecom equipment makers don't bundle spying features into their systems because warrant / subpoena compliance costs are only billable to the government if there is a separate line item. (Or that used to be the case.) Your data has been for sale at a price for a long time.

As a technical person and a taxpayer I read about the prices being charged and this bit

"Prather said phone companies have the technical ability to turn on a switch, duplicate call information and pass it along to law enforcement with little effort."

and I have to agree with the guy. You can design a system like this, include the authentication system and have it up and running within a day or two. Add in parameters for how long you generate the data and then sit back and use that same system for years with only the occasional security patch and audit. The amount of work this system would need is absurdly low.

The amount of money law enforcement gets charged is routinely $50,000 per wiretap. That's the equivalent of charging everyone a dollar to go across a toll to go across a bridge in downtown Chicago that was built in the 1920 and has paid for itself back in the 1930's.

We've gotten to the point anymore where we have surveillance just because we can, and because we should. That being said, we need some kind of roadblocks to prevent our society from becoming a complete police state. These prices, which are realistically hundreds to possibly /thousands/ of times higher than the telcos actual expenses may be the only thing keeping us from from an even more widespread surveillance state.

OscarTamerz:I think for my $775 I should get free unlimited G4 mobile wireless from those stingy bastards at Verizon. Plus the NSA guys would get to watch the video I download too so it would be win-win.

American voters say 55 - 34 percent that Edward Snowden is a whistle-blower, rather than a traitor, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.In a massive shift in attitudes, voters say 45 - 40 percent the government's anti-terrorism efforts go too far restricting civil liberties, a reversal from a January 14, 2010, survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University when voters said 63 - 25 percent that such activities didn't go far enough to adequately protect the country.LOL@ humans

imontheinternet:Verizon is far and away the worst telecommunications company. They charge people like they have a monopoly when they have about a dozen competitors. It's a wonder anybody stays with them.

In lots of areas, they sort of do. I hate them, but where my business is, I have no other real option.

Well Honestly, I'm torn:On the one hand I'd rather the FBI and NSA just stopped doing this because it's fundamanetally wrong and does extreme violence to American's cherished values such as our right to privacy.

But on the other that basically ain't gonna happen because there are way too many on the HIll and in Government who respond "sounds fine to me" when offered Franklin's famous propostion of trading liberty for temporary security. So maybe where ethics and civics have failed, the almighty dollar can succeed. If telcos make it extremely expensive to get this information, maybe agency budget constraints will cause there to be controls put on the junior G-men who want a massive data dump every time they want to take down a kid slinging E at a local nightclub.

PreMortem:It used to be LE would come into the central office and put a recording device on the persons copper landline. Then they built locked rooms that cabled out to the main switch.

Those rooms went dark ~10 years ago. Curious why Verizon and others can justify a cost for these actions.

Are you familiar with how the government has been on an outsourcing trend lately? Hiring just one knowledgeable tech can reach 120k/yr in the DC area. This way, the CIA goes to someone who is already collecting the information and simply buys it from them.

The Muthaship:imontheinternet: Verizon is far and away the worst telecommunications company. They charge people like they have a monopoly when they have about a dozen competitors. It's a wonder anybody stays with them.

In lots of areas, they sort of do. I hate them, but where my business is, I have no other real option.

Other companies will work with you. They have portable antennae that connect to the internet and act like short range cell towers. I had to get one for my place. Even if it costs a few bucks a month, you save a ton compared to Verizon.